ely, I suppose, whither my foolish
impulses would lead me; and he asked me--I should rather say he
ordered me--under no circumstances whatever to follow him out to South
Africa."

John remembered the doctor's warning, and said nothing.

"So, you see--I can't go," said Lady Mary.

There was a pause.

"I am bound to say," said John, presently, "that, in Peter's place, I
should not have liked my mother, or any woman I loved, to come out to
the seat of war. He showed only a proper care for you in forbidding
it. Perhaps I am less courageous than he, in thinking more of the
present benefit you would derive from the voyage and the change of
scene, than of the perils and discomforts which might await you, for
aught we can foretell now, at the end of it. Peter certainly showed
judgment in telegraphing to you."

"Do you really think so? That it was care for me that made him do it?"
she asked. A distant doubtful joy sounded in her voice. "Somehow I
never thought of that. I remembered his old dislike of being followed
about, or taken care of, or--or spied upon, as he used to call it."

"Boys just turning into men are often sensitive on those points," said
John, heedful always of the doctor's warning.

"It is odd I did not see the telegram in that light," said poor Lady
Mary. "I must read it again."

She spoke as hopefully as though she had not read it already a hundred
times over, trying to read loving meanings, that were not there,
between the curt and peremptory lines.

"It is not odd," thought John to himself; "it is because you knew him
too well;" and he wondered whether his explanation of Peter's action
were charitable, or merely unscrupulous.

But Lady Mary was not really deceived; only very grateful to the man
who was so tender of heart, so tactful of speech, as to make it seem
even faintly possible that she had misjudged her boy.

She said to herself that parents were often unreasonable, expecting
impossibilities, in their wild desire for perfection in their
offspring. An outsider, being unprejudiced by anxiety, could judge
more fairly. John found that the telegram, which had almost broken her
heart, was reasonable and justified; nay, even that it displayed a
dutiful regard for her safety and comfort, of which no one but a
stranger could possibly have suspected Peter. She was grateful to
John. It was a relief and joy to feel that it was she who was to
blame, and not Peter, whose heart was in the right place, a